Highlights Archives
Fur Trade 101: Its Role in Wisconsin History
The fur trade was Wisconsin's first truly global economic endeavor, bringing together French, British, American and Indian traders into a web of cultural, commercial and political exchange. On Tuesday, July 15, at 12:15 p.m., Isaac Walters will discuss the important place of the fur trade in Wisconsin's past, while dispelling many of the myths that surround its history, in a talk at the Wisconsin Historical Museum on Madison's Capitol Square.
From 1650 to 1850 Wisconsin's economy revolved around the beaver. Hats made from water-resistant beaver pelts were the perfect protection from northern Europe's inclement weather, and they became immensely popular in the 17th century. Anyone who could supply beaver skins to cities in Europe could grow rich. Merchants in Montreal began to import products, including metal knives, awls and kettles, steel flints for starting fires, guns and ammunition, alcohol, and porcelain beads, that Indian hunters wanted — and demanded beaver skins in return. The furs would be shipped into the interior for storage in regional warehouses in settlements such as Michilimackinac, on the strait between Lakes Huron and Michigan, and then redistributed to smaller trading posts at Green Bay, Prairie du Chien, and La Pointe on Madeline Island. For two centuries Wisconsin played a central role in this multinational commerce.
The effect on Indian communities was dramatic. Father Louis Hennepin noted in 1680 that Indians he visited in the upper Mississippi region were using clay pots, stone tools, and bows and arrows. Ten years later trader Nicolas Perrot, traveling in the same area, found that these had been entirely replaced by brass kettles, iron axes and firearms. By the early 18th century, most of Wisconsin's Indians tended their cornfields with hoes of iron instead of stone or bone, dressed in cloth garments more often than deer skins, lit fires with steel flints, made jewelry of porcelain, silver, bronze and copper shipped from France, and pursued game with firearms rather than bows and arrows. French missionaries accompanied the traders, but corruption on the fur trade frontier was rampant. Most residents and leaders in Indian communities nevertheless maintained their traditional customs and beliefs while simultaneously embracing imported technology to carry out daily tasks.
As the decades passed, British officials and merchants in Montreal replaced French ones, and ultimately American companies took control. By then the fur trade was declining, as the most profitable fur-bearing mammals had been largely excised from the Upper Mississippi region. But, also by then, many of our state's modern cities had begun their lives as fur trading posts, including Green Bay, Milwaukee, Portage and Prairie du Chien.
:: Posted July 9, 2008
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